Traveling By Bus And Tram Expensive

Travelling by bus and tram has become more expensive in almost the whole country, since the introduction of the OV-chip card. According to a study published on Monday at treinreiziger.nl, the rates of regional transportation around The Hague has increased the most in the past two years. In The Hague and surrounding areas the went up, in two years time, by more than 47 percent. In Amsterdam there was an increase of about 38 percent and in the rest of Noord Holland the rates for bus and tram rose by over 27 percent. In 2011, the ‘strippenkaart’ was replaced by the OV-chip card. Since then the regions themselves were making the decisions on the price per kilometer. As a result, according to  treinreiziger.nl, weird price differences have been noticed. The costs for a ride on the city bus in Leeuwarden are less than ten cents per kilometer, while the local bus in The Hague costs nearly seventeen cents per kilometer. Totally weird is the situation in the Nijmegen region, where the distance from Nijmegen to Uden is operated by two different carriers and hence, one trip cost you 4.92 euro while the same trip might also cost you 5.07 euro In almost all regions, the rates per kilometer have increased by 8% or more, since 2011. Exceptions are the Utrecht region, where traveling by bus was four percent higher and the Almere region, where a bus has become even nearly five percent cheaper. Besides the kilometer price, passengers pay on each trip a base rate that is the same across the country. That rate increased in two years time also with nearly nine percent.